My grandfather died the day after Christmas on the floor of a hospital bathroom where he’d hit his head and bled out. When we got there, the orderlies had staged his body in the bed and cleaned up the violence. But in their haste, they’d left thumb smears of clotted blood, like smashed grapes on the tile. The grout was black in the grooves.

My mother and I sat on the edge of Grandpa’s bed surrounded by the Christmas presents he’d opened earlier that day. I took the squish of his hand. It was still warm to the touch. He hadn’t been gone long.

“Feels like he’s still here,” my mother cried. She kissed his forehead and it broke my heart to see the raw grief of a daddy’s girl.

I looked up at the hospital ceiling, where all souls hover to watch their final scene. I didn’t sense him. I just felt the institutional hum of fluorescent lights and drop ceilings. I wanted to believe my grandfather could be a ghost. That in times of trouble his cold hand could slip around mine and make me warm again. But as much as I loved him and needed his presence, I just didn’t believe.

A few years later, a pretty girl sprung it on me that I was going to participate in a séance. Communication with the dead. I usually lean away from such magic, but men move in strange ways for pretty girls. They do unnatural things like build monuments and listen to Matchbox 20, so I said OK.

“You have to promise me that you’re going to keep an open mind.”

“Promise.” I said.

The seance was a party of four. My girlfriend, her sister, me and the psychic medium. The medium was a small thing. When she arrived, she looked tired as a new teacher. Her hair was short like a boy’s. Her glasses were dark rectangles pressed on a round chalky face. Her name was Viktoria with a K.

I tugged my girlfriend. “Where did you meet her?”

“She’s my hairdresser.” That sentence right there should have put a bullet through my open mind. But I don’t delight in deflating honest people, so I took a swig and sat in the circle.

“Clear the table and hold hands.” I put my top-heavy glass on the floor by my feet and pretended to be focused on something other than the feel of the sister’s hand in mine. I’ve missed the message of many prayers while distracted by the unearned intimacy of joined hands.

“There is a presence in here,” Viktoria said. “It’s male.”

My mind groaned, but my heart got nervous. Grandpa. The story says it should be grandpa, returning to certify my life, to tell me I turned out well and fit the dimensions of a worthwhile man.

“He wants to talk to … you.” Viktoria turned toward the sister, my fellow skeptic who could doubt with the best of them. “This spirit is laughing. He says he can’t believe you’re doing this. That this isn’t like you.” The psychic’s smile faded out. “This man died young. He keeps mentioning something. High school? Yes. He keeps saying ‘high school.’”

I watched the sister’s skepticism leak out of her eyes and roll off her cheeks in big plops.

“Yes. That’s Jeff. He died last year of cancer. We worked together and joked about the place being like high school,” the sister said. “Oh, my.”

“He says you are going to be OK. Says that everything is OK,” Viktoria said. “Everything is going to be OK.”

After the séance, I felt humbled and irritated as I wiped my wine off the floor. How stupid I was for feeling disappointment in my own correct prediction. There was no comfort in my logic. I wanted to be wrong and I felt envious of the excited debriefings going on in the kitchen.

I loved my grandfather. To this day, my office remains strewn with his things. His desk phone. His watch. His pipe stand. His green humidor with the dried dust of his last pouch settled inside it. I loved him.

Two nights ago, I called the sister and asked her what she remembered about “the night of the séance.” Even after a decade, she remembered everything. And she cried just as hard when she told it again. “I miss him to this day,” she said. “I’m so glad we did that séance.”

I felt stupid again. We all believe in ghosts, and we’re all haunted.

Gordon Keith is a Dallas writer and broadcaster and may be contacted at gordon@gordonkeith.com.

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